By Mike Lee '09
July of 2007 found Amy Reynolds living in Costa Rica, studying the local Catholic Church's answers to questions of social justice. Amy had traveled in order to interview local leaders and to read their writings and documents in order to understand their motivations better. Amy also wanted to spend time learning about life in Costa Rica, and how it shaped the views of the people around her. How did local economic conditions shape their views on Christ's role in provision of necessities?
It became more than an academic question when Amy’s family had a chance to see the health care system firsthand. Her daughter Adrianna became suddenly ill: her throat began to close up, her lips became puffy, and the local physicians wanted to hospitalize her. The medical staff was injecting Adrianna with steroids to combat a presumed allergic reaction, but they were either unable or too busy to explain to Amy what medications they were giving her. "This was all going on in Spanish," Amy recalls, "so that was a little bit intimidating." Adrianna recovered fine and is now a healthy four-year old, but Amy still remembers the anxiety of that day very clearly. I find myself suspecting that that day has shaped her ideas of the directions in which Costa Rica must grow from here.
Of course, the emergency rooms in Costa Rica are not a normal part of graduate school in sociology. Then again, Amy Reynolds isn't a normal graduate student.
* * * *
When Amy first set foot at Harvard for college at age eighteen, she had every intention of studying math or biochemistry. While neither of her parents had gone to college, her father was in engineering and Amy hoped to follow him into the sciences. She found, though, that sociology and its discussion of racism gripped her interest in a particularly profound way.
"It wasn't until college that I first confronted questions of race," Amy tells me. "I lived in a fairly white town, and all my friends were white. But now college was a different environment." Sociology intrigued her because it gave her a way of thinking about the questions that were on her heart: where does racism come from? How does it affect the people around her, both victims and perpetrators? Over time, questions of economic as well as racial inequality became her life's passion, and she has continued studying them throughout graduate school at Princeton.
In particular, international inequality as evidenced in international trade caught Amy's attention. What power relationships were involved in this phenomenon, and what were the economic consequences for the poor? And, most importantly, how did religion impact the way that people think about free trade?
As Amy began to study the way that religious groups become involved in the market--implicating questions of international trade and economics--she focused her attention on three groups that had made statements regarding the Clinton Administration's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a similar treaty for Central America (CAFTA). Her dissertation, now in its final stages—"I defend in January," she tells me—focuses on the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Catholic Church in Costa Rica, and an unofficial group called "Kairos" in Canada. Each of the three organizations is shaped by mission and calling, yes, but also by circumstances and geography.
"I was most curious about why the church was saying so much in Central America," Amy says. "How did they enter into the public discourse? Why do they think they have a role? Various groups do bring their religious values into their analysis, but they bring it about in different ways. Most of them don't critique capitalism per se, but they do all really critique the individualism of the market despite their diverse theological origins. They all claim that markets have to prioritize what happens in the community over the individual."
The Catholic Church in Costa Rica, for example, is relatively constrained in the statements it can make and can't explicitly denounce free trade agreements. "Still, if you read between the lines," Amy says, "they weren't in favor of the free trade agreement."
As Amy explains to me, there are two major reasons for this. The first, of course, is that the local Catholics are accountable to a global body. But perhaps the more important reason lies in Costa Rican history. Because of past civil strife, Amy says, "they have an emphasis on keeping society together, as Costa Ricans prioritize peace and dialogue." On controversial stands—Costa Rica was the first nation to have a referendum on CAFTA—the church wants to make sure that it is not too strident in its denunciations. This is the sort of analysis at which Amy's expertise really shines through: composing a context to better explain a group's true feelings, giving her audience—in this case, me—a sense of what makes these groups respond the way they do.
By contrast, the Presbyterian Church in the United States is limited mostly by internal constraints as a quasi-democratic body. "Any social policy they make," Amy explains patiently, "is the result of a representative social body voting on it. If they make a social stand, it's because the general assembly body and the ministers are voting yes and representing what the church wants to say." The church's rhetoric "comes out of an intellectual Reformed tradition, with an interest in research and thinking through things."
Still, this bottom-up legitimacy and thoughtful consensus gives them greater strength: "They've come out and said these free trade agreements aren't good and that they reject them. They don't reject free trade in principle; they just say that we need more provisions to protect the environment, to protect health, to guarantee that America doesn't drive out small farmers in Central America through subsidies for American workers." Again, Amy's explanation is tremendously enlightening: the democratic process pushes the church towards a more moderate stance, but the accompanying legitimacy permits it to take that stance more firmly. The church can declare its nuanced policy with authority in a way that the Costa Ricans often cannot.
Finally, the Kairos group in Canada—"kind of like Sojourners, in the US"—remains an unofficial church arm precisely because they don't wish to function with those constraints. "They're quite leftist and alternative in their politics and their approach to the economy. They would reject capitalism entirely, if they could. They would encourage management boards that would guarantee that goods were provided for all, and they really protest free-trade agreements. They take a critical approach to everything that happens, including WTO meetings. They almost have a conspiracy theory, saying that people were kept out of talks, and that what happens there is not legitimate. They advocate an alternative economic order." Amy pauses here for a moment. "They don't really convert people to their side. They don't really aim to. They feel more... prophetic," she explains. "They feel that as long as they're speaking the truth, that's the good they pursue."
What makes the Canadian group more radical? A host of factors, but Amy points to one in particular. "Canadian organizations pride themselves on the fact that Canada does a better job than the US of supporting human rights. They appeal to Canada's tradition." Amy's excitement is tangible as she explains that "these groups are becoming transnational, yes, but they are still speaking on the issues that are important within their own societies."
Her dissertation, as she says, "is mostly like a textual analysis, examining the published documents that are different for each group." She's spent a month examining church archives in Costa Rica; she's attended Kairos meetings in Canada; she's interviewed about thirty people and analyzed over two hundred documents relating to each group's stand on inequality. "What are the themes that come up? What were the major religious themes? Why do they do what they do? How did their structure or their beliefs or their location influence the things that they choose to say?"
* * * *
In addition to Adrianna, Amy has a husband, Steve, and another daughter named Emily. Amy chuckles over the phone as she tells me that Adrianna was born just a month after her third-year comprehensive exams, and that Emily was born just a year ago, as Amy was finishing up her dissertation. "Having kids during graduate school has been one of the big faith challenges—it's definitely been the biggest struggle that my faith has come into. For the last four years, they've been there all the time—and that's good!—but I've had to learn how to deal with what it means to be someone committed to being a mother and committed to being in missions."
Amy pauses to reflect on her faith experience at Princeton. "I really liked my church there," she says. "It really taught me a lot about honoring church and I grew in my faith... but there definitely was this idea that motherhood is more important than vocation. And yet I believe that He has called me to this vocation, and so it makes it hard when you're already trying to balance the challenges of parenthood and career and the faith communities that you're a part of have been more hurtful than helpful in that regard."
Fortunately, she tells me, Steve is in a similar field. "He also studied sociology in grad school," and in fact part of his work also focused on Central America. His work took him around the world as well, as he worked in South Africa and El Salvador. I find it easy to picture Amy and Steve traipsing around the world, bringing their children with them as they grow as a family that works towards the social justice issues that they're confronted with.
* * * *
The normal discouragement of graduate school can make it easy to doubt God’s purposes. “Was God really calling me to this? What do I have to show for six or seven years? And you start to wonder: am I furthering God’s Kingdom? Sometimes you lose sight of that in graduate school: I’ve got to get this assignment done, this paper done, turn this chapter in.”
Amy stops to think. “Sometimes when I start to doubt, I think back to the Harvey Fellowship. I don’t take the mark of the Harvey lightly. It represents people saying ‘We believe God can really use you and what you’re studying.’ The application process more clearly showed me God’s hand in my academic life. And thinking back to that process has been very helpful at the moments where I feel like giving up. With the economy the way it is, sociologists aren’t particularly in demand—but God’s given me the encouragement to press on with what I believe He’s been calling me to.” Here, Christ has provided an anchor for her. “I entered grad school with the idea that I wanted to do research in an international setting, and was open to God possibly leading me to teaching overseas. It’s been hard to maintain that focus, and not be enslaved by the graduate school mentality of seeking prestige: ‘You have to be at X institution or Y university.’ I have prayed instead that God would help me to do great research and be where he would have me make a difference. Where God calls me may not be where Princeton thinks I should go. Sometimes I forget that as I come to the end.”
* * * *
When I ask Amy about her future career, her voice perks up noticeably. She knows exactly what she wants to do: she wants to bridge a gap. “The groups I’ve been interviewing tend to be theologically more liberal; they’re not evangelicals. And so I’m kind of viewed as an outsider—because many social activists feel disdainful of evangelicals. For most of these groups, evangelicals have often been part of the problem, or at least the communities who are not concerned with these social issues. Meanwhile many evangelicals feel a void between their calling and their faith—but my own faith does come in and does influence me.”
Amy pauses for a moment to reflect. “And it isn’t just in research, but it’s especially in teaching. I think professors can be profoundly influential. If it weren’t for some of my professors, I don’t think I’ve have become interested in inequality as a justice issue. And,” she says, “I would love to be present for the moment when students start to experience justice as a calling.”
